Independent Online, S. Africa

Berlin - Anthrax struck western Europe on Friday as German officials said preliminary tests had confirmed that mystery packages found in two towns were contaminated.

Four weeks after a Florida man became the first of four Americans to die of the disease, the first instance of anthrax surfaced in the mail in western Europe. Lithuania and, on Friday, Pakistan have also reported findings.

One package was received by a labour office in the eastern German state of Thuringia and two packages were discovered in unexplained circumstances in the northern town of Neumuenster.

"The first tests on the two packages confirmed the initial suspicions of anthrax," said Heide Moser, regional health minister for the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein.

A total of 30 suspicious packages were found in Neumuenster, scattered in various locations in the town and a nearby forest. The tests on the other packages have not been completed. It was not clear if any of them had been sent through the mail.

In the eastern state of Thuringia, a the health authority said initial tests on a letter received by a local labour office had confirmed the suspicions of anthrax.

"A preliminary examination has confirmed the presence of anthrax spores in a letter in Rudolstadt," a spokesperson said.

All the material was undergoing further tests at the Robert Koch institute in Berlin, a national centre for disease control.

The German government's national security council came together in Berlin for a meeting as a result of the anthrax cases. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was out of the country, concluding a trip to Asia with a stopover in Moscow on Friday.

The German post office, Deutsche Post, said it had closed distribution centres in the Thuringian towns of Gera and Rudolstadt and had sent staff home.

"Deutsche Post has taken these immediate measures as a result of the anthrax suspicions in Thuringia," it said.

The first letter, which was delivered last Thursday, October 25, to the labour office in Rudolstadt, had not been opened before it was handed over to authorities.

Thuringia Health Minister Frank Michael Pietzsch told a news conference in the state capital, Erfurt, that the three people in the labour office mailroom who had touched the letter, and seven others who used the same room, were all tested.

The workers notified the authorities as the package, with a return address in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, appeared to contain a package of powder.

However Pietzsch said that, despite the return address in Pakistan, the letter had been posted in Germany.

"The letter appeared to be unusual to the workers and they contacted police," said Pietzsch. "It had been sealed with tape and there appeared to be a small package of powder in it. It was not opened. The workers' conduct was exemplary."

On Thursday, health officials in Lithuania said they were almost certain they had found anthrax in mail delivered to the US embassy in the capital of the Baltic state, Vilnius.

On Friday, the Pakistani government said at least one of four suspicious packages delivered to a national newspaper, a computer company and a bank over the past 10 days had been confirmed as containing anthrax. No-one had caught the disease.

A spate of anthrax attacks in the United States after the attacks on New York and Washington has sparked fears that the deadly bacteria were being used as a biological weapon, possibly by the Islamic militants accused of the September 11 assault.

At least 16 people in the United States have been confirmed as having either inhalation anthrax or the less deadly skin version. All but one are known to have contracted it through contaminated mail.

Four people have died from inhalation anthrax, the deadliest kind, since the September 11 attacks on the United States.

The panic has sparked a string of hoaxes and false alarms in the United States and other countries. - Reuters

-- Anonymous, November 02, 2001